Climate change is 'real' and human caused, but EPA boss boosts coal

Andrew Wheeler, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Acting Administrator, talks to reporters, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, after touring the Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station in Seattle, a project funded by a low-interest loan from the EPA. Wheeler defended coal energy, and the Trump administration's decision to abandon the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.

Andrew Wheeler, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Acting Administrator, talks to reporters, Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, after touring the Georgetown Wet Weather Treatment Station in Seattle, a project funded by a low-interest loan from the EPA. Wheeler defended coal energy, and the Trump administration's decision to abandon the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is "not in the business of picking winners and losers" among the nation's power plants, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, said in Seattle on Thursday.

"Coal does provide low cost, efficient energy for communities around the country," said Wheeler on a visit to EPA's Region X headquarters.

The EPA boss was visiting a corner of America where the coal industry has been on the ropes.

Washington's one coal-fired power plant is being phased out. So is the Boardman plant in Oregon, with two units at Colstrip in Montana bound for the ash heap. The Lummi Indians torpedoed that giant Gateway Pacific coal export terminal proposed north of Bellingham.

Wheeler defended the Obama administration's proposal to scrap the Obama Administration's Clean Power Plan. It is being replaced by a plan called ACE -- for Affordable Clean Energy -- in which states will regulate their own coal plants, and if they wish roll back clean energy incentives.

"A number of the anti-coal regulations of the Obama administration drove the shutdown of coal plants earlier than expected," Wheeler said, when asked about market-caused closure of coal plants.

The EPA is in the process of weakening conditions for enforcing the Mercury and Air Toxics rule instituted by the Obama administration.

"The EPA is not in the business of policing winners and losers," Wheeler said.

When the ACE program was announced, the New York Times studied the fine print of regulatory documents, and found an estimate that the relaxed power plant emission standards will result in 1,400 premature deaths in America each year.

Gov. Jay Inslee pounced on the figure and used it for a classic display of Inslee hyperbole.

"I think it is fair to say that Donald Trump is a co-conspirator in the premature death of 1,400 people every year if this misbegotten plan went into place," Washington's "green" governor said.

Countered Wheeler: "I don't know if Governor Inslee has taken a hard look at what we are proposing."

He argued that ACE will reduce carbon emissions across the country by 35 percent, a figure vehemently disputed by critics of the program.

At the recent G-7 summit, he chided European environment ministers that the U.S. is cutting CO2 emissions "faster than they are." The Europeans remain committed to the Paris Climate Accords -- President Trump is withdrawing the U.S. -- which Wheeler described as "greatly unfair to the United States."

Wheeler succeeded EPA boss Scott Pruitt, who was summoned to the White House and fired last July, after a succession of scandals over gold-plated official travel, refusal to publish schedules of meetings with lobbyists, global warming skepticism, and a sweetheart deal on rent from a lobbyist's wife.

Wheeler is a lot smoother. Unlike Pruitt, he has worked in Washington, D.C., for years. In Seattle he met with EPA Region X staff, conferred with the right-wing Washington Farm Bureau Federation, but also conferred with leaders of Indian tribes.

The acting EPA boss said that he does believe that climate change "is real, and I do believe humans caused global warming."

But the EPA's agenda of deregulation remains unchanged.

Columnist Joel Connelly has written about politics for the P-I since 1973.